Bill Mullins wrote:The only one making errors of probability here is you, Chris, when take individual probabilities and multiply them together to imply that their product reveals some ultimate probability.

Take the example just mentioned. Suppose that 100,000 of 76 million Americans in 1901 were good writers, and suppose that there were 2000 First Edition copies of Expert. You've suggested, then, that that means that there were ~3 good writers who owned a First Edition copy of Expert. That would be true If and Only If the distribution of good writers, and the population of people who owned 1st Ed copies of Expert, were independent of each other.

But they almost certainly weren't independent of each other. Good writers, as a group, tend to read more than average people, and have more books than average people.

It is called an estimate. The number of first editions is an estimate. How many good writers there are in the population is an estimate. The independence I have assumed is also an estimate. But an estimate is much better than entirely ignoring that facts need to be combined to judge the strength of a case. Not putting facts together is a much bigger error than assuming statistical independence in this case. Come up with better estimates. Quantify the dependence. The result, the relative strength of various cases compared against each other, will not fundamentally change.

Odd to be called out for "ignoring facts" by the person who ignores the fact that there is no evidence that shows Gallaway had any skill with cards whatsoever; or that there is no evidence of anyone every having used "Erdnase" as a German-language nickname until a century after Expert. There are two characteristics -- skill at sleight of hand with playing cards, and a reason to use "Erdnase" as a pseudonym -- that define the author of Expert at the Card Table. And Gallaway can't be shown to have either of them.

Tom Sawyer's most recent post on his blog makes the strong case that Eugene Edwards (author of Jack Pots) was, if not a plagiarist, certainly a borrower of the language of other people's writings. If that is so, then it would seem to be a great mark against Gallaway being Erdnase if you make the case that Gallaway and Edwards were the same. How so?

If Edwards steals language, and Gallaway and Edwards were the same person, then to the extent that Gallaway writes like Erdnase means only that Gallaway stole from Erdnase, not that Gallaway was Erdnase.

Bill Mullins wrote:Odd to be called out for "ignoring facts" by the person who ignores the fact that there is no evidence that shows Gallaway had any skill with cards whatsoever;

At least he had magic and gambling books in his library. E.S. Andrews or W.E. Sanders had none as far as we can tell. On that point Gallaway shows more Erdnasian traits than these two.

Bill Mullins wrote:Tom Sawyer's most recent post on his blog makes the strong case that Eugene Edwards (author of Jack Pots) was, if not a plagiarist, certainly a borrower of the language of other people's writings.

I don't think he makes a strong case, but if you have examples of outright plagiarism please give them. Erdnase also borrowed language: "Masterly feats of Palming and Unflinching Audacity." This is taken from Hoffmann's More Magic where he writes describing the SAME trick: "...lies in dexterous card-palming supplemented by unflinching audacity". Erdnase is not entirely free from borrowing language himself.

Bill Mullins wrote:If Edwards steals language, and Gallaway and Edwards were the same person, then to the extent that Gallaway writes like Erdnase means only that Gallaway stole from Erdnase, not that Gallaway was Erdnase.

It is yet another of the many examples where you demonstrate that you can't think critically. There is a big difference borrowing language when writing about the same subject, same story, same trick, as both Erdnase and Edwards do, and borrowing language when writing about a completely different subject. Why would Gallaway 'borrow language' from a magic book when he is writing a book on print estimating? That is not a sign of borrowing. It is a sign of author identity. But it is great that you acknowledge that Gallaway writes like Erdnase.

Alabama is mentioned is on page 160, as follows: "Edward W. Pettus, at one time senator from Alabama, was an inveterate poker player . . . ." Alabama never had a senator named Edward Pettus. It did, however, have a senator named Edmund Pettus, after whom a famous bridge in Selma is named.

Perhaps Eugene Edwards isn't quite the scholar of Alabama lore that Chris makes him out to be.

This is great, Bill. It makes my point in two important ways.

1) Edwards gets the name almost correct. The second initial W. is correct. The family name is correct. The first name initial is correct, too. The only error he makes is writing Edward instead of Edmund. As you can see these two are very similar first names. They both are Ed...d. Exact same first two letters, same last letter, and then three letters in the middle which are different. An easy error to make. Who would know the name of a senator down to the second initial, but somebody who actually lived in Alabama during the time the senator was in office (1897-1907)?

2) A Freudian error. The author writes his own first name 'Edward' instead of 'Edmund'. That may indeed be the biggest give away that the author was Edward Gallaway.

If one reads the paragraph in Jack Pots where the good senator is mentioned it becomes clear that the writer knew a lot about that place and the senator:

There lived in Selma, Alabama, the town where the senator hailed from, in the early ’70s, a wealthy railroad president, Major Lanier, of the old Alabama Central Railroad, running between Selma and Meridian, Miss., now a part of the Southern Railway system. The major and the senator were boon companions, with a friendship almost as strong as Damon and Pythias, and they used to spend their summers at the major’s summer home in Talledega, above Selma.

Thanks for the contribution Bill. The case that Edward Gallaway = Eugene Edwards = S. W. Erdnase has become even stronger.

lybrary wrote: Who would know the name of a senator down to the second initial, but somebody who actually lived in Alabama during the time the senator was in office (1897-1907)?

Anyone who could read a newspaper. Edwards is retelling someone else's tale here, as well, even to misnaming the Senator. He had no personal knowledge of Alabama.

Your boy Eugene has compiled a bunch of poker stories that others wrote, and put them together in a book. There's no reason to think he knew anything about the game, or of sleights -- he wasn't Erdnase.

Bill Mullins wrote:Your boy Eugene has compiled a bunch of poker stories that others wrote, and put them together in a book.

Then please show us where a hypnotist Callaway is mentioned in the press who makes people see different poker hands from what they really are, and from where he has the story involving Augustus. Where did he take the names and stories involving Fritz Vonderhannes and Rev. Lettus Hitemhard from?

And have you considered that Eugene Edwards/Edward Gallaway may have written these stories earlier and submitted them to newspapers himself - the samples Tom is quoting from? After all Gallaway was a newspaperman, wrote for his and other newspapers, and could have easily authored these in the first place.

This is a brief excerpt of Dr. Wasshuber's ad for his $45.00 PDF on Gallaway:

One of the first and most active Erdnase hunters was well-known science writer, puzzle expert, and magician Martin Gardner, who erroneously thought he identified cardshark and murderer Milton Franklin Andrews as being Erdnase. After Andrews many other candidates were proposed, but none had a case strong enough to withstand scrutiny. None wrote like Erdnase, nor had sufficient opportunity, nor even a good motive, to write the book. Their cases were largely based on wild theories built on little evidence, and held together by flawed assumptions.

Dr. Wasshuber declares in his ad that none of the other Erdnase candidates wrote like Erdnase when this is obviously wrong. W.E. Sanders clearly wrote like Erdnase as Demarest pointed out in his September 2011 Genii article.

To wit, Dr. Wasshuber has not been able to determine if Gallaway had any magic books in his library other than The Expert. It makes me wonder if his case for Gallaway is strong enough to withstand scrutiny

Bill Mullins wrote:If one reads the paragraph in Jack Pots where the good senator is mentioned it becomes clear that the writer knew a lot about that place and the senator:

There lived in Selma, Alabama, the town where the senator hailed from, in the early ’70s, a wealthy railroad president, Major Lanier, of the old Alabama Central Railroad, running between Selma and Meridian, Miss., .

Looks like the Jack Pots writer got the name of the railroad wrong too. The Alabama Central was incorporated in 1906.

Not necessarily so. Incorporation is a legal step. The company may have existed several years before that without being formally incorporated. For example, Drake incorporated October 1903, but did business under the name Drake before that date.

From this website: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2390"They chartered the Alabama Central Railroad (AC) in 1854, ..." I think the name could refer to more than one railway. Since the one you have was built after Jack Pots was published it is clearly not the one Edwards was referring to.

Last edited by lybrary on November 25th, 2017, 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What was then the correct name for the railroad between Selma and Meridian before 1900? Or was there no railroad at all? The author uses the specifier 'old' to refer to The Alabama Central Railroad. Perhaps there was one before 1906 with the same name?

Google book searches on " Alabama Central Railroad" and Pettus do indeed show that there was a railroad with that name in the 1870s (it had formerly been the Selma and Meridian Railroad) and ran 81.3 miles from Selma to York Station, Alabama. Its attorney in 1876/1887 was E. W. Pettus.

And have you considered that Eugene Edwards/Edward Gallaway may have written these stories earlier and submitted them to newspapers himself - the samples Tom is quoting from? After all Gallaway was a newspaperman, wrote for his and other newspapers, and could have easily authored these in the first place.

And monkeys might fly out of my butt. (in fact, that is a more likely proposition than the idea that Gallaway was Edwards or Edwards was Erdnase or Erdnase was Gallaway)

The information about the Alabama Central Railway and Lanier and Selma is legit. It's just that there's no reason to think that the fact that Eugene Edwards compiled it into his book, along with a bunch of other second hand poker stories that had previously been in print, means that Edwards was either Gallaway or Erdnase.

Bill Mullins wrote:And monkeys might fly out of my butt. (in fact, that is a more likely proposition than the idea that Gallaway was Edwards or Edwards was Erdnase or Erdnase was Gallaway)

I find it very plausible that Edwards/Gallaway collected stories he wrote earlier for newspapers, added a few new ones, and then added a few classic ones. It wouldn't be the first article/story collection in history. One reason to believe that this is the case is because Edwards does in Chapter 23 clearly state that the stories in this chapter are classic stories he is describing. He therefore clearly states that these are not his stories:

Around such an old and venerable institution as poker there has necessarily grown up a crop of classic stories, passed down from year to year, changing their location perhaps but preserving their main features, and losing nothing of their attractiveness from age. You may or may not have heard them before; if they are new to you, so much the better; if old friends they will be welcomed heartily. They run the gamut from grave to gay, from lively to severe, although in this collection we will omit the grave and the severe.

Why doesn't he make such a statement for the other stories? I think the answer is because they are stories he wrote, even if they are anchored in actual happenings and news reports. Keep in mind Gallaway started writing for newspapers with age 17, had his own newspaper for a year, and had a relative who ran a newspaper for about 15 years. We have evidence of him contacting several newspapers with news. Very likely he wrote articles for newspapers.

Still no reference for Fritz Vonderhannes, hypnotist Callaway, and Augustus. Clearly at the very least some stories are definitely his own.

2) A Freudian error. The author writes his own first name 'Edward' instead of 'Edmund'. That may indeed be the biggest give away that the author was Edward Gallaway.

Just the opposite I would think. We are all exquisitely attuned to our own names and would immediately notice a difference. Even a slight difference in spelling would raise a flag. Steven vs. Stephen would be noticed by someone with either name, but not necessarily by others. It is precisely those who do not have the name who would mistake Edmund for Edward.

I suspect you would be more alert to the difference between someone named Christopher as opposed to Christian than the general public.

I'm not sure that it has much bearing on the current Edwards/Erdnase/Gallaway discussion, but I'll throw out as a point of possible interest that Ike Morgan, who in 1900 did the "over 50 original pen-and-ink illustrations" in Jack Pots is mentioned several times in the McKinney and Jamieson-Higgins bankruptcy papers. It looks to me like he owed McKinney $250 due six months after February 10, 1902.

To me, "plausible" means that "I don't know anything that disproves this." You seem to use it as if the idea in question tends to support whatever thesis you are trying to prove.

Still no reference for . . . Augustus.

Here 'tis. If I had a group of stories, and I could show that a bunch of them were quoting previously published stories, I wouldn't assume that the ones I didn't have earlier versions of were original stories; I'd just figure that I hadn't found the originals yet.

Clearly at the very least some stories are definitely his own.

"Clearly"? Nothing clear about this. There is no evidence that any of the stories in this book are original works by Eugene Edwards.

2) A Freudian error. The author writes his own first name 'Edward' instead of 'Edmund'. That may indeed be the biggest give away that the author was Edward Gallaway.

Just the opposite I would think. We are all exquisitely attuned to our own names and would immediately notice a difference. Even a slight difference in spelling would raise a flag. Steven vs. Stephen would be noticed by someone with either name, but not necessarily by others. It is precisely those who do not have the name who would mistake Edmund for Edward.

I suspect you would be more alert to the difference between someone named Christopher as opposed to Christian than the general public.

Jack, you should read Freud. If the author would write about himself then yes, one can assume he knows his own name and would unlikely get it wrong. But he is not writing about himself. He is writing about somebody else, and somebody else's name with which he is not intimately familiar. But since the name Edward plays such an important role in the author's life it is much more likely to slip in at places where it shouldn't. In other words, the author's personal information leaks out.

Bill Mullins wrote:The information about the Alabama Central Railway and Lanier and Selma is legit.

Bill you should make up your mind. First you say the author doesn't know Alabama well enough to have lived there, because he gets the first name of Pettus wrong, and now you are saying he is legit. The author of this story was intimately familiar with Alabama. Just because he gets a first name somewhat wrong doesn't mean he made up all the other facts. The details of the story make it clear that whoever wrote it was intimately familiar with Alabama and thus very likely spent a good duration of time there.

Bill Mullins wrote:

Still no reference for . . . Augustus.

Here 'tis. If I had a group of stories, and I could show that a bunch of them were quoting previously published stories, I wouldn't assume that the ones I didn't have earlier versions of were original stories; I'd just figure that I hadn't found the originals yet.

Clearly at the very least some stories are definitely his own.

"Clearly"? Nothing clear about this. There is no evidence that any of the stories in this book are original works by Eugene Edwards.

None of the articles you found prove that Eugene Edwards wasn't the author of the stories in the newspapers.

Let us analyse the situation a bit more carefully. Bill [edited] Mullins says that Edwards cobbled together the stories from different newspapers. If that is so then one would expect that the stories are written in different styles, because they were authored by a random group of writers. My preliminary analysis of the stories shows that they are quite uniform in style, at least many of them, suggesting that the author is one and the same and that it is not a random collection of other people's stories. With that I do not mean that Edwards experienced all the stories firsthand himself. I am referring to the writing. I am claiming that the stories were written by Edwards and that these are for the most part his words, except where he quotes folks.

Second problem with the random compilation theory: How would somebody in the 19th century learn of these stories? There wasn't any newspaper search engine available back then. The only way was to actually read the newspapers and keep clippings. The newspapers that have been identified so far are:

This spans the entire US, from East to West coast. Is it really likely that Edwards read all of these newspapers? I don't think this is a likely scenario. The much more likely explanation is that the source of many of these stories is Edwards himself.

Last edited by Dustin Stinett on November 26th, 2017, 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason:Edited for childish name calling that the author should know is not appropriate to this debate.

2) A Freudian error. The author writes his own first name 'Edward' instead of 'Edmund'. That may indeed be the biggest give away that the author was Edward Gallaway.

Just the opposite I would think. We are all exquisitely attuned to our own names and would immediately notice a difference. Even a slight difference in spelling would raise a flag. Steven vs. Stephen would be noticed by someone with either name, but not necessarily by others. It is precisely those who do not have the name who would mistake Edmund for Edward.

I suspect you would be more alert to the difference between someone named Christopher as opposed to Christian than the general public.

Jack, you should read Freud. If the author would write about himself then yes, one can assume he knows his own name and would unlikely get it wrong. But he is not writing about himself. He is writing about somebody else, and somebody else's name with which he is not intimately familiar. But since the name Edward plays such an important role in the author's life it is much more likely to slip in at places where it shouldn't. In other words, the author's personal information leaks out.

"The famous undersea scientist, Jack Cousteau..." is a sentence I would never write, because I know he doesn't have the same name I do.

I certainly haven't read all of Freud, so maybe you can give me a citation where he points out a situation where one's own name is substituted for another similar name.

I hope posters on this board don't mind me asking about another somewhat different subject concerning Erdnase:

While looking at the "Technical Terms" section, I noticed that all the terms except "Filet Card" are still in general use. Was that term originated by Erdnase? Does anyone else use it, before or after?

Jack Shalom wrote:I certainly haven't read all of Freud, so maybe you can give me a citation where he points out a situation where one's own name is substituted for another similar name.

Well, that brings back great memories of times past. I can only point you to the German version I read many years ago. The book is called "Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens". First important point is that this type of Freudian slip happens predominantly with proper names, "Eigennamen" as it is called in German. Something that is also important for other aspects of the Erdnase analysis, Freud writes: "daß Eigennamen dem Vergessen leichter unterliegen als andersartiger Gedächtnisinhalt". Basically he says that names are much easier forgotten and misremembered than anything else. Think about the Smith Dalrymple controversy. People here give me such a hard time when I say names are easily misremembered, something Freud was very well aware and wrote about, but folks here willfully ignore. He goes on and writes: "In solchen Fällen wird nämlich nicht nur vergessen, sondern auch falsch erinnert. Dem sich um den entfallenen Namen Bemühenden kommen andere - Ersatznamen - zum Bewußtsein,..." Which means that people replace the real name with a different one. Later he shows on one of his personal examples that such replacement can be prompted by similarity. His example is "Trafoi" which triggered his wrong rememberence of "Boltraffio" when it should have been "Signorelli". In our case this would be Edward instead of Edmund. Or in the Dalrymple/Gallaway case it could be one political cartoonist with another. The exact associative chain in the mind can be all kinds of things, whatever the person is currently thinking about including ones own name.

Bill Mullins wrote:The information about the Alabama Central Railway and Lanier and Selma is legit.

Bill you should make up your mind. First you say the author doesn't know Alabama well enough to have lived there, because he gets the first name of Pettus wrong, and now you are saying he is legit. The author of this story was intimately familiar with Alabama. Just because he gets a first name somewhat wrong doesn't mean he made up all the other facts. The details of the story make it clear that whoever wrote it was intimately familiar with Alabama and thus very likely spent a good duration of time there.

Holy cow, Chris, the obvious explanation for this just goes right by you. Every fact about Alabama in this anecdote as it appears in Jack Pots is taken from a widely-reprinted newspaper account. Edwards read the account, and copied into the book. He didn't know anything about the state beyond what he had read. He didn't live in Alabama.

Bill Mullins wrote:

Still no reference for . . . Augustus.

Here 'tis. If I had a group of stories, and I could show that a bunch of them were quoting previously published stories, I wouldn't assume that the ones I didn't have earlier versions of were original stories; I'd just figure that I hadn't found the originals yet.

Clearly at the very least some stories are definitely his own.

"Clearly"? Nothing clear about this. There is no evidence that any of the stories in this book are original works by Eugene Edwards.

None of the articles you found prove that Eugene Edwards wasn't the author of the stories in the newspapers.

But the burden isn't on me to prove this. I'm not the one making the fantastic claim that Edwards wrote all of these articles, and sent them to newspapers across the country over the course of a decade.

Bill know-it-all Mullins

I showed this to my wife, and she just laughed. Chris, I don't know it all. I just know more than you.

My preliminary analysis of the stories shows that they are quite uniform in style,

And your preliminary analysis of Expert was that it was written by an immigrant.

Second problem with the random compilation theory: How would somebody in the 19th century learn of these stories? There wasn't any newspaper search engine available back then. The only way was to actually read the newspapers and keep clippings.

The same argument applies to what you are claiming -- how did Edwards learn of these stories to write them down? Obviously he read them in the newspapers. If he lived in Chicago, the libraries would have had files of newspapers from all over the country. And I've seen in several of the reprints that I have found mention that the originally came from the Chicago Times-Herald.

This spans the entire US, from East to West coast. Is it really likely that Edwards read all of these newspapers? I don't think this is a likely scenario. The much more likely explanation is that the source of many of these stories is Edwards himself.

What makes you think that these are the newspapers that Edwards read, or are even that they are the original newspapers in which the stories were first printed? For the ones I've linked to, I didn't try to find the first place the stories were printed. I tried to find examples that could easily be linked to, and weren't behind a paywall. I have no idea about which newspapers the stories originally appeared in (but I wouldn't be surprised if they all could have been found in Chicago papers, or in papers subscribed to by the Chicago library).

Bill Mullins wrote:I'm not the one making the fantastic claim that Edwards wrote all of these articles, and sent them to newspapers across the country over the course of a decade.

It is not a fantastic claim for an author to compile all his newspaper articles into a compilation. And as I wrote before I am not saying these are all Edwards/Gallaway's personal stories. It is a mix. Some are personal, others will be the stories of friends and colleagues, some will be pure fiction, and others will be paraphrased from newspapers and other sources.

Jack Shalom wrote:I certainly haven't read all of Freud, so maybe you can give me a citation where he points out a situation where one's own name is substituted for another similar name.

Well, that brings back great memories of times past. I can only point you to the German version I read many years ago. The book is called "Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens". First important point is that this type of Freudian slip happens predominantly with proper names, "Eigennamen" as it is called in German. Something that is also important for other aspects of the Erdnase analysis, Freud writes: "daß Eigennamen dem Vergessen leichter unterliegen als andersartiger Gedächtnisinhalt". Basically he says that names are much easier forgotten and misremembered than anything else. Think about the Smith Dalrymple controversy. People here give me such a hard time when I say names are easily misremembered, something Freud was very well aware and wrote about, but folks here willfully ignore. He goes on and writes: "In solchen Fällen wird nämlich nicht nur vergessen, sondern auch falsch erinnert. Dem sich um den entfallenen Namen Bemühenden kommen andere - Ersatznamen - zum Bewußtsein,..." Which means that people replace the real name with a different one. Later he shows on one of his personal examples that such replacement can be prompted by similarity. His example is "Trafoi" which triggered his wrong rememberence of "Boltraffio" when it should have been "Signorelli". In our case this would be Edward instead of Edmund. Or in the Dalrymple/Gallaway case it could be one political cartoonist with another. The exact associative chain in the mind can be all kinds of things, whatever the person is currently thinking about including ones own name.

Well, now that's one I read, although not in the original German, I'll grant you.So I'll ask again, can you give me a citation where he points out a situation where one's own name is substituted for another similar name?

Jack Shalom wrote:Well, now that's one I read, although not in the original German, I'll grant you. So I'll ask again, can you give me a citation where he points out a situation where one's own name is substituted for another similar name?

Jack Shalom wrote:While looking at the "Technical Terms" section, I noticed that all the terms except "Filet Card" are still in general use. Was that term originated by Erdnase? Does anyone else use it, before or after?

Say, this is quite an interesting observation and one I don't believe has been previously noted. Erdnase defines a technical term ("Filet Card") in order to save the reader "much time and perplexity in comprehending the processes described." But, as best I can tell, he never uses that technical term again in the book. So why define it at all? My best guess would be that he intended to use it when organizing the book, then didn't, but didn't realize he hadn't, so left the term in place. Or perhaps he used it in material that he left out of the book? This appears to be the only technical term that he defined and then didn't use. Curious...

Jack Shalom wrote:While looking at the "Technical Terms" section, I noticed that all the terms except "Filet Card" are still in general use. Was that term originated by Erdnase? Does anyone else use it, before or after?

Say, this is quite an interesting observation and one I don't believe has been previously noted. Erdnase defines a technical term ("Filet Card") in order to save the reader "much time and perplexity in comprehending the processes described." But, as best I can tell, he never uses that technical term again in the book. So why define it at all? My best guess would be that he intended to use it when organizing the book, then didn't, but didn't realize he hadn't, so left the term in place. Or perhaps he used it in material that he left out of the book? This appears to be the only technical term that he defined and then didn't use. Curious...

It appears that the term "filet card" is a typo in the "Learned Pig" edition, alas, and any editions that cribbed from it. The first edition (and ones prepared directly from it) says "First Card" rather than "Filet Card" and he does use that term in several subsequent descriptions.

Bill Mullins wrote:But the burden isn't on me to prove this. I'm not the one making the fantastic claim that Edwards wrote all of these articles, and sent them to newspapers across the country over the course of a decade.

It is quite the opposite, because we already have information that the stories were written by Edwards. He has released them in a book where he identified some stories not being his, and with other stories he does not make that disclaimer, ergo he claims them as stories he wrote. After all the book has been copyrighted. That is a legal claim to the authorship of the text. It is up to you to show that any of these stories have been published earlier under a different name. So far you haven't done that. The burden is on you if you want to claim the opposite of what is obviously the case given the information we have.

Bill Mullins wrote:What makes you think that these are the newspapers that Edwards read, or are even that they are the original newspapers in which the stories were first printed? ...but I wouldn't be surprised if they all could have been found in Chicago papers, ...

That is up to you to show that all these stories were initially published in Chicago newspapers. Why would one assume that an article published in a California newspaper originated in Chicago? You have to show that.

Jack Shalom wrote:Well, now that's one I read, although not in the original German, I'll grant you. So I'll ask again, can you give me a citation where he points out a situation where one's own name is substituted for another similar name?

Chris claims that Eugene Edwards is another pseudonym of Edward Gallaway. This must have been the bombshell he had alluded to in his newsletter. Beyond an interest in gambling shared by both, is there any scholarly evidence to support this assertion? Does the evidence, if there is any, go beyond linguistic comparisons?

Gallaway surely must have been one busy man to have written The Expert, Jack Pots, Tom Custer's Luck, and A Million Dollar Jackpot one after the other in succession. On top of which he had his other duties to attend to.

Leonard Hevia wrote:Gallaway surely must have been one busy man to have written The Expert, Jack Pots, Tom Custer's Luck, and A Million Dollar Jackpot one after the other in succession. On top of which he had his other duties to attend to.

Dude, you should read more carefully, Tom Custer's Luck, A Million dollar Jackpot, and Ante - I raise you ten are partial reprints of Jack Pots. We are only talking two not particularly large books: Expert and Jack Pots.

Leonard Hevia wrote:Chris claims that Eugene Edwards is another pseudonym of Edward Gallaway. This must have been the bombshell he had alluded to in his newsletter. Beyond an interest in gambling shared by both, is there any scholarly evidence to support this assertion? Does the evidence, if there is any, go beyond linguistic comparisons?

Gallaway surely must have been one busy man to have written The Expert, Jack Pots, Tom Custer's Luck, and A Million Dollar Jackpot one after the other in succession. On top of which he had his other duties to attend to.

I dunno. I heard that Isaac Asimov could write one book a week! And come to think of it Walter Gibson was no slouch either.

I do know some magic authors take about 10 years to write a book. I could never figure that out. Now I can. It is bloody torture!

But wait! I remember writing a book in one week too! It wasn't exactly War and Peace and I concede it was a very small booklet. I was in Vegas which I consider despite conventional wisdom to be a very boring place indeed and not a patch on grubby but wonderful Blackpool. I was bored out of my mind so wrote "Marmaduke the Wonder Mouse" in one week. Mind you, it took me years to get round to publishing the bloody thing and it is my worst seller. Damn good book though! Best one ever written on the mouse as befits my very obvious genius in these matters.

Last edited by performer on November 26th, 2017, 5:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.